


a taste of home

by simplyclockwork



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, Longing, M/M, Mind Palace, Mind Palace John Watson, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Whump, Sherlock in Love, Sherlock in Serbia, Sherlock's Mind Palace, Sherlock-centric, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26202082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork
Summary: Sherlock Holmes survives Serbia not through sheer force of will, but by remembering what brought him there.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 22
Kudos: 93





	a taste of home

**Author's Note:**

> Heads-up for brief, repeating mentions of torture.

It’s been days, days beyond counting. Or has it been hours? It doesn’t matter either way. They’ve broken him, what little remains to break. They want information, and he has none to give. They want to know about Moriarty, about the collapse of his network, but the truth isn’t what they want to hear.

The whip strikes his back, making Sherlock flinch. His skin ripples beneath the lash, and he wonders at the power of names. If they knew who he really was, would it make a difference? With his name cleared in London, across the Westernized world, does it still retain meaning?

Meaning. Sentiment? Gibberish.

They flay open the skin of his back. Sherlock closes his eyes and retreats, deep, deep, deeper into depths far out of reach. Here, the blood running over his flesh is a distant tickle. The pain is like a whisper, startling only in abrupt, sporadic bursts and far-off. Dismissed. 

In his Mind Palace, Sherlock walks through darkened halls. His fingers brush the walls, over wood and plaster, over the marked remains of places long since left to ruin. He doesn’t look at the abandoned corridors, where things more easily forgotten, too painfully remembered, reside. His eyes are pinned on the ground as he walks past a sign claiming, _Here Be Monsters!_ The skull and crossbones beneath remind him of pirate hats and tall grass reaching over his head. 

Sherlock moves on. His feet carry him through dust, over whispering carpet. At the end of the hall is a door, one with police tape pinned over it in a large, yellow X. 

_X marks the spot_ , he thinks, and, in a body reduced to shudders and pain, he smirks. Pirates, again. Of course.

Back in the depths of his Mind Palace, Sherlock touches a fingertip to the tape. It is smooth and slick under his finger, and he remembers when he marked the door off-limits. That was in the beginning, when the things contained within were too much; when they might entice him to return, to end things before they truly began. But here, he is at the end. Moriarty has fallen, now in every way, including name, and Sherlock is ready. He is ready to be finished.

He is ready to come home.

Outside, a sneering man presses a lit cigarette to Sherlock’s back, right over his spine. It burns and singes, the smell of cooking flesh permeating the air of his false surroundings. 

Sherlock shakes reality off like water droplets. He rips the police tape from the door and pushes inward, the stiff, rusted hinges creaking their protest. The sound is a warning, ignored as Sherlock steps into the room.

The floral aroma of bergamot lingers here, prevailing despite the haze of dust motes drifting in the air. Underlaid is the faintest smell of wool, of mint toothpaste and sharp gun oil. Light cascades from skylights, behind which an eternal blue sky shines. The illumination falters and dims as Sherlock moans low and deep at the flicker of pain that manages to break through. He fortifies his mind and sinks into the imagery, the mingling fragrances growing stronger the deeper he forces himself. 

A voice calls to him, a soft, remembered, “Sherlock?” From the dark emerges a familiar form. A man whose exterior appears dull, but Sherlock knows the cable-knit jumper is deceiving. Beneath is a man made of feral grins and perfect precision, deadly, dangerous. 

Sherlock looks at him, and he remembers what it feels like to love, how it tastes when his heart stutters and his lips go dry with something other than dehydration. It has been nearly two years since he last visited this room. Two years of refusing to let himself remember, reminisce, touch, and taste preserved cerebral perfection.

He sweeps forward on stumbling feet. The pain is back, breaking through, and Sherlock falls broken and desperate into John’s open arms. “John,” he sighs, voice gone ragged with need and grief, with an abject ache for this to be real. 

“I missed you,” John says against his hair, the words muffled.

“I know,” the reply sobs from Sherlock’s numbed lips, anguished. “I know, I know. I tried, John. I tried to come home.” They’ve broken him, and all that remains is John. His arms around Sherlock’s shoulders, his hands brushing down Sherlock’s back, his nose pressing into Sherlock’s overgrown curls.

“Shh, Sherlock.” John is a warm, tangible sensory fiction. “I’ve got you.”

The whip cracks, marking skin and sending flinching pain through the fantasy, and Sherlock clings. He clings to John and the safety of his own mind. Somehow, someway, it works. John’s lips drift over his temple, and Sherlock reminds himself of his purpose. There is no sacrifice without suffering, and this is his agony. 

To be so close, to be nearly finished and caught at the end stings worse than the blade flaying his skin. The irony is bitter, a sharp taste on his tongue, a lingering flavour in his mouth that makes him want to spit. Sherlock sinks further, burrowing away from reality and deeper into John’s embrace. 

John’s fingers tangle in his curls, an echo of nothing but hopeful wishes, and Sherlock holds onto the whisps of fiction with every fibre of his mental being. He is close, so very, achingly close.

He just has to hold on a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> This was really short, but I have a great big, huge, massive case of writer's block, so it's what I got right now.


End file.
